QuEER is a pleasure-centered nature practice for queer and trans folks.

Born from the land, water, air, and other animals, QuEER is a practice in animacy. Kinship with the more than human world that awakens our transition zones–those places where our body ends and the air, earth, or water begins. Sitting in the creek every day, I arrived in my eco-body fully. My senses awakened to a conversation between the ecology of my body and the ecology of the water, trees, plants, squirrels, herons, crows, sparrows, crawfish, rocks, moss, mud, and sun. My mind began to soften and tend to the erotics/pleasure of transpecies relationship. I realized I had entered into ritual space. I began paying attention to the languages surrounding me, and brought what I learned, and continue to learn, to form QuEER. QuEER is an ongoing breathing ritual of ecological pleasures.

Queer Erotic Ecologies & Rituals are a set of earth and body centered ritualized practices for exploring pleasure. We begin by Allowing our minds and bodies to be as they are, then find Presence through our Sensory awareness of our environment, before finally integrating our experiences through Creative expression.

We live in a culture that often points out what is wrong, and not only encourages us to fix ourselves but demands it. QuEER is about turning that messaging around and Allowing our brains and bodies to organically do what they already know how to do. This is not a self-help practice. There is nothing wrong with you! You are invited to arrive as you are, bringing your whole self to the journey. As we move through the practice you are encouraged to take what works for you, adapt as needed or desired, and leave what doesn’t fit.

Joy and pleasure centered in the body allows us to reclaim our power, strength, humanity, and kinship with others. Nature-based healing practices have been shown to repair the brain, free the body/mind from trauma, and reconnect us to our larger ecological relationships. QuEER is a specific practice designed by and for 2STQIALGB+ folks.

It is important to note that this is not a trauma processing practice, though it is trauma-informed. Trauma may show up, and is welcome when it does, but the goal of this practice is to move toward what feels good. Specific trauma-centered work is important and valuable, and can be supported by this ritualized pleasure journey but is not replaced by it.

Erotic Ecologies & Rituals: The exploration of the deeply sensual kinship of nature, including humans (we are nature too). Sensual kinship with nature bodies (water, sun, earth, air, bird song, etc.) is an act of liberation offering us a deeply transformative way back to our humanity and animality.

Erotic is the sensual, mental, emotional, physical, sexual, or spiritual experience of awe. This is my own definition, based upon deeply personal embodiment of the erotic, as well as my own academic explorations of eroticism.

The erotic is deeply ecological, somatic, sensual, living and breathing through our bodies.

Eros comes from the Greek and is related to love and pleasure. More than sex (as we know it in a white Eurocentric context), the erotic is about pleasure-based relationships.

QuEER centers the diversity at the core of our sensually intimate and animate relationships, beginning with the sensual ecology of our own bodies and intertwining with the ecosystems around us.